V for Valerie

                     

 Max Hospital,

"Department of Oncology is to your right if you turn left from the centre of that Help Desk you see to the north of the Cardiology unit," bottle feeds the attendant. V scans her grim virginal face, apparently in gratitude, and mumbles: "You're spoofing, aren't you?"

Attendant: Eh?

"You based your information on the supposition that I'm a regular at the Cardiologist's; which, I'm sorry to disappoint you, I'm not. So, either it's a flimflam or you've been too clever by half," wheezed V.

Attendant: Miss, I'd appreciate if you could translate this.

V: Translate? Oh, ah, yes! I mean if I could survive this, I'm pretty darn good about surviving the Oncologist.

Department of Oncology

There's a long wait. V awaits the roll-call. She used to be like Voltaire's Pangloss who believed that everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. But now, the world seems pimped out in pretentious mockery; faces swirling in to whisper: "To be or not to be: that is the question." Exasperated, she attempts to lounge in the quadrangle of a wait room, awaiting the final verdict of very many rays that have merry-gone-round through various tangents of her body variously.

Abstract 1: A little girl is pacing the length of the corridor. Her hair's a shade of dark chocolate in twirls that sway playfully. V calls on her, struggles to trot past her but the girl is swift. She's crooning a familiar verse: "The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began." V calls out again: "Hey, you!" The girl's too soaked up in the verse to listen. "..Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can." V grabs her elbow and turns her around in a hurried sweep. "Oh, you!? I know you, don't I?" gasps V in deep consternation. The little girl smiles calmly and says: "Yes. Were you not me back in the day, some 24 years ago? But, my dear, I could never be you," and then merrily she gallops away humming. "Let them a journey new begin, but I at last with weary feet...will turn towards the lighted inn..."

"But, my dear, I could never be you. Not now. Never now," V tells the girl silently; and the long corridor echoes with the finality of their mutual admission. Of truth and time.There's a haze that engulfs the corridor and shrouds her vision. There's a black hole. Then, there's nothing.

Abstract 2:  Beyond the dull screeching and wheezing of the local metro run, there's a silence. It's a late evening autumnal hitch. Of the innumerable faces, cooped up listlessly, V could hear nothing but see the quaint quivering of their lips in unison as if to paraphrase some thought, some idea. She half turns to find him there; his little finger clasping her little finger: effortlessly, eagerly and firmly. They're close, but no cigar. They feel very close and they are very remote.

"So you still think the stream shall never find the sea?" he whispers.

"Shall. I am hopeful," she smiles. 

"Then how would you tell them apart?

"That, then, is inconsequential. Is that not?"

"Tell me more, more about the stream. She makes me merry."

"And the sea? Wouldn't you like to hear more about it? After all, the stream wouldn't have got far but for the sea. Would it?" and awaiting no answer to a question so indisputably definite, she bows out. When the doors open to let her out, she briefly turns to look at him: "So long!" and then there's a bright dazzling light that shrouds her vision. Then, there's nothing.

Abstract 3: V is lying on a raised table scantily wrapped in a knee length gown. The surgical lights overhead look like the volcanic gates of Mordor. There's an anaesthesia cart placed next to the table. The surgeons are in good cheer and engaged in what-you-call heavy medical parlance. An electronic monitor is placed on V's chest and the pulse monitor attached to her finger. The anaesthesiologist comes along, greeting politely: "Hey, hi Miss! I'm gonna inject this fine needle, about 10 cm long, into your spinal nerve. This shall be a bit difficult without your cooperation. So, I suggest you curl up your body and do not attempt any move. If you do, I'm afraid, I'll have to inject this again and again till you decide to do as I suggest. Alright, so here I go. You, yes you (to a nurse). Take off her gown." V attempts a Taekwondo reverse back-kick; the 10 cm fine needle, robbed off the proverbial bull's eye (lower back in this case), goes flying like a paper plane and lands tip down. Too fragile to prick the hard surface, the fine needle breaks its spine. Three men, hurriedly, come along and hold her legs, arms and curl her up as instructed. There's a prick, then pain, then some more and then... there’s nothing. V can see the scalpel, the very fine threads, cotton; but of them she could feel none.

She feels herself slipping away into the land of shadows; and in that very moment, a shrill cry engulfs the amphitheatre. "Hey, look! Here's your little Ninja with his hidden dragon! Now, now don't bid your taekwondo on him else the dragon will soak you with some hot beverage that might just bust your chops," says the gynaecologist flaunting her cat bird's seat. V looks intently, studying the baby's face from stem to stem. There's a bright dazzling light; it doesn't shroud her vision any more but drowns her woe and kills her foe: the darkness in her cornered soul.

"Patient No 8, Ms V. Your turn. Please carry your file and the reports," calls out the assistant to the Oncologist. Awakened from her reverie, V flutters to straighten up and hurriedly makes her way across the flood of ether.

The room's a pale green and well-lit. The specialist's eyes scan the reports thoroughly, narrowing at intervals to inflate and deflate the idea of mystery.

Specialist: So here we go, Ms V. To keep it brief and candid: we'd like to begin with chemo sessions anon. I suggest you get your hair cropped as the malignant behaviour of these sessions should anyway not leave much for an option. Or, any.

V: Is it terminable, doc?

Specialist: The disease - yes. In this instance, I cannot say.

V felt an urge to get to the other side of the long mahogany table, take his hands in reverence and appeal: "By light of heaven and ray of stars, save me! You know, oh you don't but you must - I'm a sucker for life."

But instead, V: How long?

Specialist: That, lady, I'm not qualified enough to predict.

V: Enough to see the seedling grow? Enough for litchis and then some more?

Specialist: (with a boyish grin) enough to fly an air-plane. Enough to love with no' much pain. Ha, enough for mangoes and much more.

V: (laughs) Enough then. I need no more. But doctor, can you really find a cure?

Specialist: I'm afraid, lady, I can't be sure. But if you hold out, we go to war. At least, make an effort.

V: We go to war. (She bows out.)

The Road

The car comes to a screeching halt. She peeps out: "Excuse me, where does this road go?"

Man in a 'Banana Republic' T shirt: Where exactly do you want to go?

V: Oh, I'd find it out later. But for now, where does this go?

Man: Are you a bit psyched out?

V: Possibly a little blotto.

Man: Then take a right if you want to go right, take a left if you want to go left, go straight if you want to go on and on and see how far you come from home.

She runs the distance in her mind and turns the car like a bottle of wine.

The Man: Where to, Miss...?

V: (chuckles heartily) East of the sun, West of the moon. Miss V, V for Valerie.

East of the sun, West of the moon

The little girl with chocolate curls, trots and trots and finds a way

Towards the moon and to the sun.

There she meets the man to say: "Let us begin and wind-up the run

West of the moon, East of the sun."

So long!